


A Very Potterlock Collection of Snapshots

by CatieBrie



Series: A Very Potterlock Series [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 2. tags:, 3. tags:, Angst, John relinquishes a bit of his story, M/M, Molly Weasley fixes things with tea, Potterlock, additional tags will be added as ficlets are added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-08-28 04:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8432239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatieBrie/pseuds/CatieBrie
Summary: “Well, that’s the kicker. I’m a wizard.”John spoke and everything around Sherlock changed. It was as if John had cast a spell and illuminated a bevy of unseen cracks and crevices previously unknown to Sherlock, a world to discover and label and file away. Ever a conductor of light, his blogger.--A collection of short ficlets set in the world of A Very Potterlock Christmas. Some will be responses to questions, some will be my own whimsy.  I have full length stories planned in this universe, but the stories here will be snapshots.Any questions, or thoughts or parts of this universe you want to see expanded? Shoot me a line on twitter or tumblr and maybe I'll write it!





	1. A Photograph Says A Thousand Words (and then some, depending on who's talking)

**Author's Note:**

> Just in time for Halloween! It's not exactly what I had planned for this month, but I've been wanting to post a few ficlets and today is a perfect day to do so. I hope you enjoy--someone requested this prompt awhile ago...but I lost who in tumblr's messaging system...

A photograph lay across Sherlock’s bed, glossy side up.

It wasn’t an ordinary photograph, not by any means.  A sea of redheads undulated within its borders, broken up by sparse brown, black and pale blonde flotsam; if Sherlock looked away long enough any number of colors would flash into existence on the head of the youngest.  They moved, waved at him, made faces or interacted with their neighbors--always a riot of activity.

Sherlock had met them all only days before, overwhelmed by a sudden introduction to a previously impossible world. The Weasleys welcomed Sherlock like a son, overwhelmingly warm and understanding in the face of Sherlock’s ignorance. Their world was new to him, a previously unseen and unexplored impossibility.

_“Well, that’s the kicker. I’m a wizard.”_

John spoke and everything around Sherlock changed. It was as if John had cast a spell and illuminated a bevy of unseen cracks and crevices previously unknown to Sherlock, a world to discover and label and file away. Ever a conductor of light, his blogger.

Sherlock had watched the photograph for hours since John gave it to him, fiddling with it with such regularity that the edges frayed; little lines of wear and tear had striped color from where he tried folding it.  The occupants had not enjoyed that particular experiment.

He picked it up and thumbed the feathered edges as he sat on the bed.  The occupants waved at him and he waved back almost shyly as he placed them on his knees.  

“Can you understand me?”  Sherlock said, cheeks pinking a bit at the ridiculousness of talking to an inanimate object.  John was out for the evening, however, and Mrs. Hudson was occupied with a date, so there was no one to see him do it or watch him fail. “Are you sentient?”

Hermione narrowed keen eyes as the others jostled around her, her own mouth moving in time with Sherlock’s as she tried to read his words.  She frowned, shaking her head in evident frustration.

Sherlock tried again, this time signing the question on a whim, and Hermione immediately brightened.

"Yes, I do! Oh, this is wonderful!"

"This is bizarre."

She laughed silently and Sherlock grinned back reluctantly.

"Can I ask you a few questions?"

"Go ahead."

"Are you aware you’re in a photograph?"

She nodded.  Around her the sea of red slowed to placidity, her fellows curious in the exchange. "It would be a bit much to handle if I were talking to a strange man in the sky, otherwise."

"I could be a god."

"You really couldn’t."

Sherlock snorted, the photograph fluttering on his knees where he had it balanced.  

"Do you have a concept of time?"

She shrugged.  "Not really. It’s 2:57 PM.  It will always be 2:57 PM."

"That’s not boring?"

"No, if we’re close enough to another wizarding photograph we can hop over to it.  There aren’t many around though, mostly newspaper clippings."

John or Mrs. Hudson’s collection, then.  How Sherlock had never found them though...

"Do you know who I am?"

"No, sorry.  But I like your questions.  Have we met?"

“Ah, so your memory stops at the same time as the picture is captured,”  Sherlock mused aloud and when Hermione cocked her head to the side in obvious confusion, Sherlock repeated himself, hands flying. "We met not long ago at the Burrow.  I’m John Watson’s--" he trailed off, not sure what to call himself.

"Boyfriend?" Hermione grinned, finishing for him.

"I suppose…" Sherlock’s cheeks reddened again and Hermione laughed.  The Weasleys and her friends now crowded so closely around her that she was like the bushy center of an orange cushion mum.

"I’ve heard of John, glad to hear he makes it back. He’s been missed."

"I gathered.  There were a lot of emotions," He said wrinkling his nose.  A lot of those had been his own. "You were a great help.  I don’t have magic, you explained things."

"I’m glad I could help," she replied, beaming at him. "What’s your name?"

"Sherlock."

"Nice to meet you again, Sherlock.  Be sure to tell me about this conversation when you get the chance--I haven’t thought to try talking to a photo yet."

"I will."

"Any other questions?"

"Not at the moment, but I’m sure I’ll have more soon."

"Feel free to ask anytime."  Ginny leaned in over her brother, George, to whisper something in Hermione’s ear.  She smirked.  "Ginny says not to bend us again. And to keep us away from fire, she seems to think you’ll try burning the photograph next."

"I won’t and I will."  But he had been considering fire before talking to Hermione.  Not the whole photograph, mind, but at least a corner.  "Thank you."

"Of course."  The others in the photo waved at him, dispersing now that the conversation had ended and Sherlock had placed the photograph to his side.  He would try talking to the little Hermione again to see how well the figures retained complex conversation--Ginny remembered him bending the photograph, but that could be a self-preservation aspect of whatever charm allowed them to move. He had so many questions to ask and it was all becoming...overwhelming, as much as he didn’t want to admit that.

A confidant who couldn’t broadcast his ignorance would be _nice_. The real Hermione had a schedule so inundated with meetings that even Mycroft would cringe away from the sheer weight of it all and so thus could only answer Sherlock's emails irregularly.

And John, brilliant John, had no grasp on how to explain magical theory whatsoever. Lestrade was even worse.

Sherlock heard the click of the downstairs lock, the creak of the door and then a familiar tread on the seventeen steps leading up to 221B. All his questions stopped clammering for attention, just for the moment.

His John was home.


	2. Forgetting is Easy, Accepting is Harder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry Watson was a squib

Harry Watson was a squib.

She never would’ve known this if it hadn’t been for her brother and his stupid fancy letter from his stupid fancy school with his stupid fancy powers.

It explained a lot. Like the weird things that happened around Johnny; the storefronts her friends never saw--but she did, right out of the corner of her eye like a phantom; the box of moving pictures and a sturdy, well-oiled stick in a lock-box in her mum’s closest.  It explained everything even as it stripped her of her adequacy. Her brother was already so smart, so athletic, so perfect and she was brash and cruel and invisible. Now he had magic too and she had nothing.

“There’s an owl at the window,” she had said one morning, a particularly sweltering summer day.  “It’s got something on its foot.”

She had been fourteen, John just barely eleven. The owl had been interesting, like the length of her classmates skirts and the cut of their hair, intriguing in a worrying way that she didn't understand and just wanted to ignore. Her mum froze and Harry caught the way her hand trembled as she put down the kettle and turned to the window.

“It must be lost,” she said, making a shooing motion but the owl fluttered in place, unperturbed; Johnny wandered over, standing on his toes to get a better look.

“That's my name, mum!” he exclaimed, pointing excited at the scroll. Their mum sobbed like a broken thing.

Mum eventually left for good and Johnny never came back for the holidays and Harry became the only ally her dad had against the rest of the world. They stood in unity and it offered her a reprieve from his stubborn bullshit because Harry hurt as much as he did and she could set aside the hateful things he said if it meant she had his approval.

But then the length of her classmates’ skirts and cut of their hair became more than a vague interest tapping at the window and she feared.

She feared the last bit of family that she had left abandoning her, of leaving her to suffer between the two worlds around her, of leaving her alone.

The worst part was that if Harry wrote him, Johnny would come back, Johnny would help her because that's what he did when he saw hurt in the world and she didn’t want to strip him of the freedom she never achieved even as she hated him for it.

She never knew that freedom for Johnny wasn't freedom at all, that he fought a war she would never know about and fought another that lost him everything. For her he had something she never would and that made him better, an _other_.  That made him another in a long line of reasons to drink.  Forgetting was easier than moving on.

Harry Watson was a squib and fuck anyone who reminded her.


	3. A Long Story Half Told

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly Weasley invites John over for tea

“Where did you go, John?”  Molly Weasley asked at the first opportunity.  She’d requested John over for tea.  Just John; his eyes held such a reluctance to let his story go that she didn’t think he’d budge with an audience.

John fiddled with his mug, not quite meeting her eyes. “It’s quite a long story.”

“I know, dear,” she replied, gently applying a heating charm to his tea.  He’d yet to take a sip, more interested in staring at his cup than drinking its contents.  His lips quirked and he finally looked her in the eye; she smiled encouragingly.  “I have time.”

“I missed you.”

She blinked, caught off guard by the non sequitur.  “I missed you too.”

“I meant to write, I really did, but…”  he trailed off with a frustrated sigh.  “A lot’s happened.”

“I imagine so, but you did write for awhile,” she pointed out gently; John winced, shying away from something that she still didn’t understand.  She continued, sure that he would relent that piece of information, that he needed to.  “I thought maybe you were dead for awhile there, two years without even a card…”

John exhaled a near silent apology, stricken, but Molly reached across the table to grab his hands before he could retreat into himself.  “John, dear, please don’t do that.  We just got you back, I just want to know where you went.”

“I really missed you,” he said again after a moment, turning his hands so that he could grip hers.  She gave a reassuring squeeze and he smiled, crookedly before dropping his gaze.  She let him fight with himself this time.  “What did Charlie tell you?”

“Nothing, really. Just that you would say something when you were ready.”

“I’ll have to thank him for that.”  John pulled away to fiddle with the neck of his jumper before he gave a little nod as if deciding something.  “I think this will be easier if I show you.”

John pushed back from the table so that he could peel his jumper off; as he unbuttoned the shirt beneath, Molly could see pink lines of scarring peak out from his vest, gnarled and shiny.  The scarring all centered around a divot in the skin, a crater amongst mountains that he fully revealed when he pulled the left band of his vest down to show it to her.  A curse wound, it had to be.

“I was shot,” he said, immediately contradicting her assumption.  “I know what it looks like, and for all intents and purposes it may as well be a curse wound, but it was done by a muggle weapon.”

“How?”

“Back at Hogwarts, remember that curse I was hit with that never became anything?” he asked, quickly buttoning his shirt back up. “Well, it became something. I can’t heal my wounds with magic, they’re all effectively curse wounds in that regard. I didn’t realize it at first because I never tried to heal my minor injuries once I started medical school.  I would sneak a spell or two on a patient if I thought no one was looking, but I wanted to learn as much as I could about muggle healing methods and it seemed best to use myself as a trial subject when I could.”

“You sound like Arthur.”

“Yes, well, muggles _are_ fascinating and it’s thanks to their healing that I was able to get any movement back at all.  The wound was infected, that’s why it’s scarred so badly.  The infection also damaged my magical core and I couldn’t…”  John trailed off again, hand unconsciously resting on top of his wand where it lay on the table, thumb trailing across the scarred wood. They matched well, Molly thought, as she let John chew through whatever held him back.

“I couldn’t cast anymore.  No magic, nothing.”

Molly held silent, even as every bit of her wanted to gasp in horror and coo reassurances.  Instead, she reached out and placed her hands over his once again, comforting herself as much as him, and waited.  There was something else there.

“I’m better with a gun than a wand now,” he continued.  “It’s more natural to reach for a linen than to cast a _scourgify_ and even when I do cast, I mess up.  The flow is funny: sometimes my spells are too strong or too weak--I can’t seem to get a handle on what it was like to freely use magic.  This happened about the first time I stopped writing, I didn’t know what to do and I couldn’t even get into St. Mungos’.  It was like my magic was just gone and after what Charlie had said...It seemed deserved.”

Molly remembered that argument--she’d shouted at Charlie afterwards as she healed the damage John’s jinx had caused, calling him a fool.  She’d yelled just as much at John the next time he came by to see Teddy with his head low and manner sheepish; but she’d assured him in the same breath that he was always welcome.  She’d thought he knew that with the way he dropped by a handful of times each year for tea, but then there was nothing for ages, followed by cards forwarded through the muggle mail.  And then a final silence.

“You were kids,” Molly said gently.  “You were angry and hurt by the war, but you didn’t deserve that.  No one deserves that.”

He smiled thinly at her.  “I suppose.”

“John Watson, I swear!” she snapped, squeezing his hand to counterbalance her sudden flare.  “If I have to beat it into you, I will. You didn’t deserve to lose your magic, especially not for turning your attention to helping muggles.  That’s just stupid.”

This time he laughed.  “Alright, alright, I understand.”

“You better, you stubborn boy,” Molly said with a smile of her own.  “Thank you for telling me.”  

“It’s the least I owe you.”

“You’re right.  You owe me a lot of dinners as well, so you better not think about disappearing again!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

She smiled warmly at him.  She was aware that he hadn’t told her everything, that something still lingered in the darkness in his eyes, but it would keep for now and she would be here when he was ready to let it go.

**Author's Note:**

> Any questions, or thoughts or parts of this universe you want to see expanded? Shoot me a line on [twitter](https://twitter.com/CatieBrieFic) or [tumblr](http://catie-brie.tumblr.com/) and maybe I'll write it!
> 
> Expect more from different characters, I really want to get into Lestrade and Harry Watson. This is literally the sappiest I get


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